In television production, and in particular live news productions, the number of combinations of video, audio, effects and other devices needed to create the unique events that are required to create a TV news program can easily number in the thousands.
The current operation of production systems, such as, for example, the IGNITE® production system available from Thomson Grass Valley, Jacksonville, Fla., requires the user to create multiple TME (Transition Macro Event) types and assign appropriate fields to match the play out channel that is assigned. For example if the user creates a SOT (Sound on Tape) TME, the user would have to create multiple SOT TMEs for each server play out channel. Those of skill in the art will recognize that various known acronyms used, such as for example, SOT (Sound on Tape), VO (Voice Over—meaning a live source will read over the clip.), NAT (Natural Sound—meaning that a live source will read over a clip that has natural sound under). There are other examples used, such as NAT/SOT (Natural Sound on a portion of the clip followed by sound full), PKG (Package—usually means a sound full tape that has the reporter track as well).
The user would assign the various servers TME to the appropriate stories, alternating between server channels to avoid back-to-back channels. If changes are made to the rundown order, then the user is required to manually manage the order of these TMEs. Because the clip identification (ID) is embedded into the TME (which is fixed to play out a set server channel) it is not easy to alter the play out channel from known productions systems such as IGNITE® (i.e., one would have to open multiple pages and change the appropriate fields to reflect the new channel. If one were to insert a Late Breaking news (LBN) item for the new server channel, one would not have the clip ID). Those of skill in the art will recognize that LBN constitutes is a TME. The production system Event Timeline is populated with production events by either opening a file or from entering TME/IQT data in the Newsroom Computer System (NCS). Thus, the LBN is TME that can be assigned to a button on the production system Graphical User Interface (GUI) or on a button on the production system automation panel. Note: TME & LBN are production macros, which consist of a group of actions that perform various production tasks, such as video switching, audio mixing, video server control, graphics control, camera control.